Free dining... Worth it to upgrade to deluxe?

[new girl]

Our first trip is 69 days away! We are lucky and will be taking advantage of free dining. We are a family of 4 (2 kids age 6, 8). We are staying for 5 nights/6 days and have 6 ADR's. Would it be worth it to upgrade & pay the difference to get the Deluxe dining? I can't seem to figure out how much extra it would be...right now I think we will need to pay OOP for 2/3 meals (character meals cost 2 TB points).

Thanks!

 

[gilby]

For me no its not worth it, we do the regular dining and that ends up being to much food.

 

[pryncess527]

With the kids, probably not. But maybe. It really depends on how much you eat.

I used the calculator on this website:
http://seeyareelsoon.wix.com/seeyareelsoon#!dining-plan-calculator/cxc0

to figure it out for H and I. It meant spending a lot of time looking at menus and guessing what we might order. We really enjoy getting to try different appetizers and desserts and both looooove steak, so for us it's probably worth it -- but I get the sense that it's rarely worth it for most families. In my plan I assumed we did a Signature meal almost every night, otherwise it was way too many credits.

 

[gincz24]

I figured out the difference for our trip in 39 days and its not worth it. The only character meal that is two ts credits is Cinderella's castle. Plus the dinner shows and signature dining. If I remember correctly it about $40 a day per adult to upgrade and $10 a day per a child. So it would be about $500 for your family to upgrade. I think paying out of pocket for 2 meals would be cheaper.

 

[kim_d]

For your first trip I wouldn't do deluxe. We've done it before when our kids were like 4 and 6. We found it very time consuming not just having 2 sit down meals a day but the travel time needed to get to each meal. We go Wdw often and so we don't fret much about rides and missing attractions since we know we will be back and we tend to go be longer periods of time like 10+ days. So for a shorter trip and it being your first one I wouldn't recommend it unless you plan to do a lot of signature dining which is 2 credits per meal. Aside from CRT I can't think of any character meals that are 2 credits

 

[Princess Disney Mom]

Don't upgrade it's too much food on the regular plan even.

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[momto2inKC]

I'd say no, especially since it's your first trip. You will be spending all your time eating if you upgrade.

 

[angierae]

I would only do DXDP on an adults trip. With kids it's too much time eating and they'll be eating regular "kid's food" anyway.

(DH and I loved being on DXDP our first trip and we had signature dining almost every night. But the youngest with us was 15.)

 

[trinchick]

I'll be the voice of dissent. We upgraded to the DxDP on our last trip (with a 6yo and a 10 mo old) and were glad we did. We ate at a character meal just about every day, including Cinderella's Royal Table. We also enjoyed the Hoop Dee Doo Revue (2 credits). We probably wouldn't have done these things if we were paying for them OOP, as the individual decisions to part with extra $$ would have been harder than the one choice to just upgrade our dining overall, if that makes any sense.

To offset the cost of our deluxe dining plan, we downgraded our resort from a moderate to a value. In hindsight I should have added a rental car, though, because Disney transport made it difficult to travel to other resorts for a TS breakfast, and we didn't enjoy the food court experience at all, especially in the morning when it was total chaos.

We traveled during a very low season when there were very few lines to wait in, so we didn't regret missing time in the parks during meals.

One consideration, though, in the budget is the additional gratuities for all those TS meals.

 

[aaarcher86]

Look at the costs and compare.


I'm totally opposite of everyone here. We do the DXDP and it works for us. We do a TS breakfast, QS lunch, and TS dinner. Nearly all the meals are character meals.

As far as time eating... A TS usually take us about an hour. In that time frame I'll meet about 4 characters. Waiting 15 for a character is pretty normal in the parks so I end up killing 2 birds with one stone. Our breakfasts are early and dinners are a bit later. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at home so 3 meals is normal. We aren't forcing ourselves to clean our plates so 'too much food' doesn't really fall I to place for us. Its a nice way for us to try new things too. Since everyone gets an app I can get one that I've never tried and my husband can get a normal app and we will share.

I do think being a first trip you aren't really familiar with where things are and your own personal style.

 

[skw444]

It's about $45/adult and $10/child per day extra for Deluxe. So, about $550 extra for your trip. You will need to figure out if you would spend that much with your out of pocket expenses. We personally enjoy the Deluxe dining plan. We like to eat at lots of character meals and Signature restaurants, so for us it's a good deal.

 

[cobright]

I am a character fiend, so charactrr dining is a must. Bank points for signature dining by smartly using snack credits. We figure all said we spend the same (taxes and tips) but we eat far better.

 

[HoosierDaddy71]

Unless you are doing multiple signature TS (IE uses two TS credits), I don't think it would be even close to making financial sense. Even if you do have to pay for a meal or two OOP, it will likely be far less than the cost to add DXDP. Looks like DXDP is about $650 over the DDP. FYI, the only character meal that is 2 TS credits is CRT. All the rest of the character meals are 1 TS.

 

[wiigirl]

I'd say no, especially since it's your first trip. You will be spending all your time eating if you upgrade.

 

[cobright]

It's hard to advise without knowing what your constants are (so to speak).

In my family it is a constant that we will do two sit down meals per day and out if a 10 day trip we will visit 3-4 signature restaurants.

To do this oop even with free basic dining costs just about the same as upgrading to deluxe. So at worse we break even but have our meal costs per-paid going in to the vacation. But then we also get a bevy of snack credits that make for some fun as well.

What happens when we don't do ddp is we don't come home with as many cool 'and then for dinner...' Stories.

 

[Brer Shay]

Just a comment on timing. Just back from two weeks in the parks and we've consistently done character breakfasts in an hour, maybe an hour fifteen. Dinners, however, were another story; two hour minimum, and one three hour. This was family for a family of five. We had similar experience on a trip last October with six adults. YMMV.

 

[honeybunches]

It depends on what you are trying to achieve. We had deluxe a couple of times and regular a couple of times. The nice thing about having the deluxe with kids is that there's no guesswork....you can get pretty much anything and not worry that you'll run out of credits. Plus you have the extra snack credits (my kids like to use them to get treats for their class back home). You can also get the appetizer for each TS meal which is nice if your kids want to eat as soon as you sit down. My daughter got a smoothie at breakfast every morning which made her so happy. When we had deluxe, we definitely didn't get our money's worth out of it (we used many credits for CS) but it was wonderful not to worry about the cost at all.

If you're trying to keep costs down and it will bug you if you don't at least break even, I wouldn't do it. We did it purely for convenience and were happy with our decision. Now we go with the regular because my kids want to eat quick and run out to ride. Plus we don't seem to eat as frequently when we're at WDW, even though we're walking a lot.

 

[davedmaine]

Our first trip is 69 days away! We are lucky and will be taking advantage of free dining. We are a family of 4 (2 kids age 6, 8). We are staying for 5 nights/6 days and have 6 ADR's. Would it be worth it to upgrade & pay the difference to get the Deluxe dining? I can't seem to figure out how much extra it would be...right now I think we will need to pay OOP for 2/3 meals (character meals cost 2 TB points).

Thanks!

No way. You'd be a total slave to your reservations .. Going from one to another for hours at a time and your kids will hate you. . I'd even drop free dining and take the room discount. You'll save a lot more. Free dining is for suckers.